The Mission of God

Andrew's anniversary gift to me was a journaling Bible. I am to pick a "lens" with which to view scripture as I read through it and write about how I see this hermeneutic playing out. I picked "The Mission of God"

Andrew and I had discussed this concept a while back. The discussion revolved around the phrase "Missio Dei", which is latin for the mission of God. Does God have a specific purpose that He is pursuing? What is God doing in the pages of scripture? Most importantly, if God does indeed have a mission, and intention with the world, shouldn't that be the mission of Christians? Shouldn't I be about what God is about? And so, I wanted to look for what God doing in scripture, so to be able to align myself with Him.

How am I defining Missio Dei? At first, I had pretty little direction. I just listened to four lectures by Dr. Mark Young, who gave a series at DTS called "Turning Theology Inside Out: Missio Dei". The thrust of his lectures was around a biblical theology of mission. That is, looking at how the idea and theme of mission unfolds throughout scripture. And mission, needs to be defined, not simply as the sending out of people from one locality to another, but as the very characteristic of being a sent-one of God, and imager of the Lord.

I have a few ideas that have been developing around this concept. For the sake of clarity I will write about them separately.

But here is my working definition of Missio Dei:

God glorifying Himself through the merciful salvation sinners restoring them to be His image bearers unto the ends of the Earth.

Preaching

I gave my sermon for the Preaching for Partners class on the 10th of October. I was really nervous, mostly due to the fact that my outline did not come together until the night before. I prayed a lot for help to deliver the Word of God to the women in my class in a way that would encourage and edify them. And all in all, things went well, by God's grace. There are certainly things to work on. And there are ways I can grow, but it was really sweet to try out putting together an expositional talk. Why? Because, by the spirit, we can preach a passage, that was written in a certain time and place, and conform to it's structure and it's intention for the church today, for the sake of the edification of the body and the proclamation of the gospel. This exercise has made me think more and more about the meta-narrative of scripture, which I will be blogging about soon. Praise God for the faithful men who proclaim the truth for the world to hear!

Our First Anniversary!

Andrew and I celebrated one year of marriage on October 3rd!

Andrew plans great surprises. Quite often, I inadvertently ruin them. However, he successfully managed to make 70% of his plans for the day a surprise.

The day before, Andrew had checked out a book for me from the library. We got home from school, and he decided to take a nap. Innocently, I opened his backpack to try and locate the book, and found 2 journaling Bibles inside. Andrew, foiled again! I still didn't know where we were going or what we were doing on Saturday, that is until Andrew plainly told the lady at Pay-Less Shoes, "Tomorrow is our first anniversary, and we're doing what all couples do one their first anniversary. We're going to Wisconsin." Right in front of me. By Accident. Priceless.

Knowing we were going to Wisconsin didn't help me much, because I don't know much about Wisconsin. On Saturday, we drove to Milwaukee, and our first stop was Lakefront Brewery. They have an "Infamous Brewery Tour" we had heard about. Sweet! We walked in, only to see a "TOUR SOLD OUT" sign. Bad news. Andrew goes up to talk to the lady, plays the first anniversary card and everything. No dice. We decide to stay and have a beer anyway, and the lady at the front has some pity on us and gives us free tickets to the tour another day with specific instructions to get there early. Sweet!

Our next stop was the Third Ward District in Milwaukee. We strolled around, and conveniently (and by that I mean Andrew planned it) ended up at a bakery with some great desserts. Sweet! (Literally). We bought some for later, and then continued on to the dinner stop. We ate dinner at Fratellos, a restaurant right on the river. The food was great. We got some yummy soup, Ahi Tuna Lollipops, Andrew had curry crusted tuna for dinner, and I had gnocchi, which I love. And, our server brought is a chocolate cupcake with a flame-shooting sparkler on top! Sweet!

The first anniversary is supposed to be the paper one. I had already gotten Andrew a new Greek New Testament as a gift when school started. I also made a scrapbook of our first year. (Did anyone else know that scrabooking requires a decent amount of time to do well?) The journaling Bibles were gifted, and then explained. Andrew's idea is for us to read through the Bible together, and journal in them for each other for a year. We are going to pick a "lens" or theme of scripture to be looking for in particular, and journal about it, and then give each other the Bibles next year. Really sweet.

We also had some great conversation about what we would like to see happen in our next year of marriage. Ways the we want to see God work in us and grow us that we can point to next year and praise Him for. I think we were most excited about this idea.

After we got home, there were roses waiting, and a movie. I praise God for a sweet year of marriage. One that hasn't been easy or comfortable, but one that was pretty great too. I praise God for my husband, who I enjoy SO much, who surprises me, and who loves me well. And I praise God for holding our marriage together, for working in both of our lives, and for authoring the sanctifying institution of marriage.

There is such a thing as the fall!

Living in a place with an abundance of deciduous tress, Andrew and I are going to get to enjoy a real and true fall season! As the cold begins to come, we get a time of transition and preparation. I remember during Halloween in Albuquerque, diving into the large piles of leaves in people's yards and dragging my feet through the gutters to kick clumps of leaves every which way and make a terrible racket of crunching and scraping. It's coming here in Illinois! Yay!

I am getting a time of transition and preparation before I start my new job. One thing that I am getting to take part in is a Preaching for Partners class, taught by one of the professors at Trinity. The class is designed to give wives a taste of what their husband will be doing in their preaching class, and also equip them to be able to structure and expositional talk should they be asked to give one for the women in their church. The professor is going through the whole process with us, and having us give a talk/sermon to our class. Since I have an abundance of time to prepare, I volunteered to go on October 10th. Already, I have been challenged by the theology of preaching. That we ask men to expound the word of God with a view towards it's application for the church today is really interesting. I told Andrew that there is a distinct difference between studying a passage and telling people "this is what I think it means" verses "here's what it means, and what you should do with it." Pretty weighty of a task. I have skimmed some of Andrew's books on the subject, and am learning about the structure that is appropriate and helpful for an auditory presentation, how to illustrate, how to apply, and how to exegete in a way that remains faithful to the text but still generates application and response for the people you are preaching to. I praise God for Grace Bible church, where the preaching is so very faithful to, reverent of, and defined by to the Word of God. After all, that's where the power of preaching lies. I am sure I will blog about the class again, and how the talk goes. I am really excited for it though!

Andrew is learning about various eschatological views, and how they have changed over time often in ways that are tied to the world events, and the overall tone of the times. I confess I still don't have all the categories straight, but I love it when Andrew is interested to learn about and explain to me these theological issues. The stance that pastors have on these things will influence the way that they read and interpret scripture. And those things are a lot more subtle than I thought they were.

Andrew and I are closer to deciding on a church. Andrew meets with the pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church next week. It's certainly a different crowd than we had expected. But we will see what the Lord does!